Al-Hussein Missile Attack
At 8:40 pm (12:40 pm EST) on 25 February 1991, parts of an Iraqi Al Hussein ballistic missile destroyed the barracks housing members of the 14th Quartermaster Detachment. The MIM-104 Patriot missile air defense installation assigned to protect the area was out of operation. Even if the Patriot system had been in operation it is unlikely that it would have prevented the Iraqi-modified SCUD missile from hitting the barracks as the missile was disintegrating and flipping end over end as it fell. In the single, most devastating attack on U.S. forces during that war, 28 soldiers died and 99 were wounded. The 14th Quartermaster Detachment lost 13 soldiers and suffered 43 wounded. Casualties were evacuated to medical facilities in Saudi Arabia and Germany.
Read more about this topic: 14th Quartermaster Detachment
Famous quotes containing the words missile and/or attack:
“... the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is well worth the efforts of a lifetime to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on the root of all evil—viz. the deadly atheism which asserts that because forms of evil have always existed in society, therefore they must always exist; and that the attainment of a high ideal is a hopeless chimera.”
—Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910)